The ultimate sanction for not going along with the bank’s nosy regulations would be that they decide they no longer want your business (because they’re afraid they’ll be risking a $2 billion fine just like the HSBC) and close all of your accounts; that actually happened to some former HSBC customers. As long as that hasn’t happened, you’re OK, and good for you for not filling out unnecessary extra paperwork.
Now one can imagine a dystopian cyberpunk future where nobody accepts cash for anything and all banks have no choice but to conform to surveillance-state regulations, i.e., the polar opposite of the legendary Swiss banking secrecy regulations where everybody minds their own business absent an actual criminal complaint.
No, they might well have filed a SAR. A SAR can generate a investigation. Or even a audit. So, but being petty you could very well have gotten yourself into trouble.
All this is interesting. Now I understand why, when I went to my bank a week ago for two cashier’s checks, one quite large and the other comparatively tiny, I was informed that for the large one I had to have the payee name typed in by the bank, but for the smaller one could write it in myself.
The teller didn’t ask me what the large check was for, but since the payee name contained the word “escrow” it was probably obvious.
That form they asked me to sign wasn’t from the government. What if I pull all my money out and say “I’m just not doing business with this bank anymore”. Would they get to know what I’m doing with the cash? What if I lie? Better yet, what if I change my mind? Am I guilty of perjury? What if I say I’m paying off a car and then don’t?
We’re going to UAE in November and I’ll be withdrawing about 6K then. I will also refuse to sign that form. But I want to get a copy of it so I can post exactly what it says here.
The point is, the banks are doing this to comply with government regulations. The banks don’t care what you are doing with your money, but they care that they take reasonable steps that the government is requiring.
All banks will be asking these questions to some degree. Moving to a new bank isn’t going to get you out of doing this or something similar to this. You might buy some time switching banks, but until the law/regulations are changed the situation will persist.
No disagreement from me. I don’t think a lot of what your government does to its citizens (and visitors) is totally in keeping with the constitution.
However, as the old joke goes about arguing with police “you can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride…” The corollary for finance would be that the Treasury can freeze your accounts for the one to one thousand days plus it might take to determine what is going on, whether there are criminal or tax issues to solve, etc… They keep your accounts frozen while they investigate in deep detail the reasons for your cash activities.
If you can think of a better anti-money-laundering system, the government is all ears. Until then, all large cash transactions are logged for possible future scrutiny. There are sufficiently few of these that they can be reliably reported and logged.
Aren’t you a police officer, or former police officer? I think you should know that intentionally misleading statements provided to the government on official matters are indeed punishable, but unintentionally misleading statements are not.
If you don’t want to fill out the form, you don’t have to.
Then what happens next? One thing that can happen is the bank will fire you as a customer. But that’s not likely, because they want your money. So what will really happen is they’ll write that you refused to answer on the form they return to the Feds.
And then it’s up to the Feds to decide what will happen. And that will depend on if you’d done this a dozen times. If you’ve done it a dozen times, then a big red flag pops up on somebody’s computer screen and they will investigate you for money laundering. If you’re just a guy who deals in cash a lot, then that investigation will go nowhere, and you might not even know it happened. Or you might find yourself in jail with your bank accounts frozen. That’s not very likely to happen if you’re just a guy who refused to fill out a form.
But showing up on some federal agent’s computer screen is something with no upside. The best that could happen is nothing, the worst that could happen is jail and financial ruin. So you have to ask yourself what the purpose of refusing is. Do you think you’re going to send a message to the banks and the Feds? What message is that, exactly?
And as for moving to another bank, you’re not going to find a bank in the United States that doesn’t keep track of suspicious cash activity for the Feds. I mean, they keep track of all transactions, the only reason they don’t bother asking invasive questions about the non-cash transactions is that they’ve got all that information recorded anyway, so they don’t need to ask you about them, they already know.
You might not be able to. After googling “wells fargo know your customer”, I found this article:
According to that article, experts not employed by Wells Fargo describe their freezing of the woman’s account as a severe overreach of KYC regulations.
Bottom line, if privacy is important to you, you might consider changing banks - but before you do, talk to prospective banks and ask them detailed questions about how they handle specific transactions so that you’ll know beforehand which one can best meet your privacy needs (at least within the real constraints of KYC/AML laws).
Actually, I’ve been guilty of money laundering on several occasions over the years. However, I discovered through experience that, if you just carefully smooth it flat and let it dry on its own, it is totally undamaged.
I understand the privacy aspect, but the fact is that possession of a large amount of cash is indeed suspicious. This is 2018. I rarely carry small or large amounts of cash. Everywhere I go, I can swipe a debit or credit card. Much easier for keeping track of budgeting and preventing theft.
If I lose my credit card, I can have a new one overnighted to me and the old one is cancelled and useless to anyone. If I lose $5k in cash, it is simply gone with no way of retrieving it.
Given the realities of this, why shouldn’t it be suspicious if you see a guy carrying $20k in cash? It’s not a slam dunk of guilt, but if you were a police officer, wouldn’t that cause you to investigate further?
It’s not legal under Federal law and due to the supremacy clause that means it’s still 100% a crime to have a cannabis business, so it’s unsurprising entities tightly regulated by the Federal government aren’t wanting to deal too heavily with cannabis businesses.
It wasn’t a government document. It didn’t even look very business like or official. As if someone just typed up a statement page on Word and Xeroxed it. Very ameaturish looking.
I find it implausible that feds would find a couple grand taken out of an account once or twice a year suspect. I’m thinking it’s these banks being way over cautious.
Sure, a couple grand taken out of an account one or twice a year isn’t suspicious.
A couple grand taken out of an account every day would be suspicious.
How can they discover that someone is taking out a couple grand in cash every day unless they record every time someone takes out a couple grand in cash?
If they only record it when someone does it regularly, how and when do they start recording? The fourth or fifth time? How do they know it’s the fifth time if the other four times they didn’t record that you were taking out large amounts of cash, back when it wasn’t suspicious?
Dealing with large amounts of cash is only suspicious when there is a pattern that doesn’t match. The only way they can detect the pattern is when they note down who is taking large amounts of cash, and when and why. That means they get that information every time someone takes large amounts of cash, even though getting large amounts of cash a couple of times isn’t suspicious.
No, like we have said the Feds* absolutely require *that banks account fo any such cash transactions.
Now, yes, it could have been a bank form. And the Feds do not require that you explain why.
But the CTR cash transaction monitoring is absolutely, 100% a Federal requirement for ALL Banks and other financial institutions, including gold dealers, pawn shops, check cashers and casinos.
Now, the CTR does not make you suspect. A SAR does. However, being unreasonable about a CTR can be a reason for filing a SAR.
Obviously I’m not a banking guy, but in general, asserting a right cannot act as probable cause for a search warrant, but a person like a police officer or a bank investigator can investigate harder if he wants.
So, if a police officer knocks on your door and asks if you will allow him to search your house because he believes your vehicle was spotted running away from a bank robbery, you can tell him to piss off, but it is very likely that he may cast a wary eye at you, even though that would not enable him to get a search warrant.
OK, so $20,000 in cash is “suspicious” and a good police officer will “investigate further”. What does this investigation consist of?
“Excuse me, sir, why do you have so much cash?”
“I’d really rather not say, officer. Am I free to go?”
Now what? Should the police officer have the power to detain the guy until he explains himself and his “suspicious” amount of cash to the officer’s satisfication? Should the police officer have a right to seize the money, and make the guy prove the money isn’t “dirty”? Should the police officer have the power to search the guy’s car? To search the guy? (To do a cavity search?) To get a warrant and search the guy’s home?
Absent some other facts (a report on the officer’s radio that someone robbed the First National Bank five minutes ago one block north of here and took exactly $20,000 in cash; or a large bag full of drugs sitting on the front seat of the car next to the bundle of money) what powers should a police officer have to “investigate further” in this situation?
